commended and adorned nothing so much by their ever-living poems. Hesiod was the first or second poet in the world that remains yet extant (if Homer, as some think, preceded him, but I rather believe they were contemporaries), and he is the first writer, too, of the art of husbandry. He has contributed, says Columella, not a little to our profession; I suppose he means not a little honour, for the matter of his instructions is not very important. His great antiquity is visible through the gravity and simplicity of his style. The most acute of all his sayings concerns our purpose very much, and is couched in the reverend obscurity of an oracle. Πλέν ἥμισυ παντός. The half is more than the whole. The occasion of the speech is this: his brother Perses had by corrupting some great men (Βασιλῆας Δωροφάγους, great bribe-eaters he calls them) gotten from him the half of his estate. It is no matter, says he, they have not done me so much prejudice as they imagine.

Νήπιοι, οὐδ’ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον ᾕμισυ παντὸς Οὐδ’ ὅσον ἐν μαλάχη τε καὶ ἀσφοδέλῳ μεγ’ ὔνειας, Κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ Βίον ἀνθρώποισι.

Unhappy they to whom God has not revealed By a strong light which must their sense control, That half a great estate’s more than the whole. Unhappy, from whom still concealed does lie Of roots and herbs the wholesome luxury.

This I conceive to have been honest Hesiod’s meaning. From Homer we must not expect much concerning our affairs. He was blind, and could neither work in the country nor enjoy the pleasures of it; his helpless poverty was likeliest to be sustained in the richest places, he was to delight the Grecians with fine tales of the wars and adventures of their ancestors; his subject removed him from all commerce with us, and yet, methinks, he made a shift to show his goodwill a little. For though he could do us no honour in the person of his hero Ulysses (much less of Achilles), because his whole time was consumed in wars and voyages, yet he makes his father Laertes a gardener all that while, and seeking his consolation for the absence of his son in the pleasure of planting and even dunging his own grounds. Yet, see, he did not contemn us peasants; nay, so far was he from that insolence, that he always styles Eumæus, who kept the hogs with wonderful respect, Δῖον ὔφυρβυν, the divine swine-herd; he could have done no more for Menelaus or Agamemnon. And Theocritus (a very ancient poet, but he was one of our own tribe, for he wrote nothing but pastorals) gave the same epithet to a husbandman Εμέιβετο Δῖος ἀγρώτης. The divine husbandman replied to Hercules, who was but Δῖος himself. These were civil Greeks, and who 

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